 Hello everyone. Good afternoon My name is Elizabeth, and I am the project officer at the network of European museum organizations Today, it is my pleasure to invite you back to our welcome session of Nemo's European museums conference museums making sense Before we begin, I'm going to review a few technical bits that I'm sure you're all very familiar with at this point Your cameras will always be off, but you will be able to see the speakers If you have questions for the speakers, please place them directly in the chat and we will have a Q&A session at the end If you have technical or organizational questions, please write a message to office at Nemo.org If you can't hear us or if you're having connection issues, we recommend checking your audio settings settings or closing zoom and rejoining So now I'd like to introduce you to our next intriguing webinar With Lisa Baxter of the experience business and Jan von Neck of the Wurttemberg State Museum They will dive into their case study examining the benefits of visitor experience design in every aspect of the museum visit With how to become relevant successfully establishing visitor experience planning So without further ado, I will hand it over to them to get started So Hello everybody My name is Jan von Neck from the State Museum Wurttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany I'm sharing with you the most awkward Experience of my life. I have about 150 people looking at me in my office I'm pleased to go through this with Lisa Baxter with whom I've been working throughout the last one and a half years We would love to share our experience just some brief words about the Wurttemberg State Museum It's a museum for cultural history. We have about one million objects in our collections and They date from prehistoric ages up to the 20th century We do one larger exhibition per year Which means an exhibition of about 1,000 square meters and about two to three other exhibitions in the other facilities we run So Lisa it's your turn Hi, I'm Lisa Baxter. I'm founder of the experience business and an audience experience passionately I'm a primary designer facility programs that place the audience experience at the heart of strategic objectives and work in practice And I work with arts and cultural organizations like these to ensure that what they offer is appealing relevant meaningful engaging and impactful Not only does this go to the heart of mission, but it also makes good business practice The way that I do this is by facilitating programs and labs that take people on an experiential learning adventure on the value and craft of audience experience design and this is what we're going to be sharing with you today Um, we're going to tell you the story of how my design methods slowly infiltrated an initially skeptical museum Yan And how this is materially impacting on their thinking practice and culture Our intention is to shift your perspectives or making your visitor sensibility And hopefully make you feel curious and motivated to try something new The please do pop your questions in chat if there's anything you'd like to ask us at the end Chapter one is called taking a leap of faith Two years ago, I was invited by the digital agency flux guide based in vienna To introduce my practice to land was museum of somberg Who they were working with to develop a multimedia guy They were the very start of the project and hoped my intervention my intervention would result in a more detailed brief For some time flux guide had been Frustrated in the number of museums that regarded digital as a bolt-on a shiny new toy that would magically re-envigorate the visitor experience With no real thought into the holistic understanding of what the experience is or how digital might fit in Not only did this result in bad digital dreams, but also in digital solutions that did not fulfill their potential Stop smiling at me. Yeah, you're making me giggle In all its more than problems here Flux guy wanted me to support them in developing a more integrated view of digital development By grounding them in my work around visitor experience And yeah, it was a little skeptical to begin with Yes, in fact, I was Our museum You probably read it in the beginning. I'm the head of the project steering So I'm used to develop processes for the house and as soon as we start with the project We exactly know how to do it and we have well established processes in our museum So I was thinking what's that about? Why do I need a consultant for just explaining me how to do my work? I know that already So I'm generally skeptical against consultants and workshop methods as I have an education as process facilitator as well And I have been to too many irrelevant workshops in my life. Usually I sit there and think oh, this should be done better So I was asking myself why get involved into something that I would already know how to do it successfully Okay, so That's what I have to contend with When I went into the museum for the first time So when I work with museums in this way, um and embark on the visitor experience program I always begin by pressing the museum to the three step bottom Gently challenging dominant thinking and practice such as We're in the business of making exhibition Knowledge and learning is paramount My department is responsible for this bit of visitor experience and my favorite We believe the visitor experience is very important They even though museums say that Most of them don't know what visitor experience is not in any meaningful way And too many regard that experience as a byproduct of what they really do Which is to create exhibitions and learning programs So let's take a moment now to reset So I'm going to say that we are not just in the business of creating exhibitions for visitors We're also in the business of conceiving designing and managing experiences for people Museums in general tend to regard their exhibitions and programs of work as they're called product But what visitors are really buying into with their time their attention and their money Is their experience of the exhibition? Yeah, and as significant as your collections and stories are There's simply a means with which to achieve that experience We might go so far as to say that the visitor experience The learnings the the impacts that are created are in fact your core value offer This experiential value If well designed can bring value back into your museum in the forms of mission delivery stronger brands More and happier visitors repeat visits increase loyalty and spend So what is visitor experience exactly? Well, I just want to share a few very simple frameworks that when I share them with museums they find them very helpful So here's the first statement, which is that the visitor experience The end to end interaction between a museum and a visitor In other words, it's a journey that has a beginning a middle and an end Beginnings might be the first click on your website or crossing the threshold into your museum Endings might be when they exit your building or when they are subscribed from your mailing list Next it is a blend of the organization's physical curatorial digital and human performance The sense is stimulated the emotions evoked the learnings meanings and impact the results This is about the unique lending of your environmental, operational, human and curatorial processes And how your visitors interact with them and the degree to which those interactions deliver a great experience This is what makes you matter Finally these experiences are intuitively measured against visitor expectations across all moments of contact How you perform in relation to visitor expectations is a major factor in influencing their experience You see the expectations that your visitors come with are in fact mainly established by you through your branding or digital presence marketing and communications The degree to which you meet those expectations Have a direct impact on what they think about you and the value they place on you So let's just talk a moment for a moment about visitor satisfaction In my approach is never to measure the satisfaction levels of a visitor Well, if I were to ask you what the most satisfactory experience you've ever had was Would you be able to tell me? It's because satisfaction is what makes you forgettable You've given your visitors what they've expected and and I got what I wanted And yet this is how most of you measure performance My view is that we need to be aiming in fact for visitor delight by being surprising memorable and powerfully meaningful and always in a way to succeed to your visitors expectation So let's move on now to the process of experiencing And what I want to share with you next is a lovely model that Really demonstrates in a very simple way at different levels or layerings and experiences All experience begins with the sensors which wants to wake and lead to a corresponding emotion Both of these happen in a split second In your bodies And they are prethought And they set the state of what happens next Which is when we realize that we're having an experience Here is where we've moved from the unconscious to the conscious realm Where we become aware of our experiences alert to our thoughts and feelings about that experience Such as learning something new and interesting Feeling a strong sense of identification with a particular exhibit or a story Or rejoicing in the bonding and physical displays of affection that a family day out at a museum writes A meaningful experience is when something personally significant accounts And we are struck by what that experience means to us It feels like a depth chart and resonates somewhere deep inside These meaningful experiences and their impacts can shape and reinforce who we are Or put another way, we are the sum of all our meaningful experiences and what we make of them Finally, there is a turning point This is when the experience elicits a shift in your visitor's perspectives understanding and perhaps even their belief systems A shift which causes them to think and act differently as a result of the museum visit They might make different choices about their lives or maybe even become an activist This is what we refer to as a transformative impact of arts and culture In the work that I do, I aim to integrate as many of these layers as we can Into visitor experience through careful empathy design and planning In order to help this process, I've overlaid these different types of experience on Tumas Los Hierarchy of needs like this To create a ladder that supports me and museum teams In designing for higher and deeper levels of experience, engagement, meaning making and impact First, the visitor's safety and physical needs need to be met In order to ensure that they're at ease and importantly fully receptive to the intended museum experience Fail here and they'll go into survival mode and won't be receptive to anything that you want to show them And they'll be feeling all the associated negative feelings and emotions of frustration, discomfort and disorientation Then, we focus on the human-to-human interactions, which as we know is a vital element of the visitor experience Next is the intrinsic experience This is about the moments by moments interactions between your museum and your visitors And all the thoughts, feelings and emotions that occur during that time Enrichments, fulfilments and shifts are the higher order experiences This is where visitor empathy and an understanding of their need states really come into their own in the design process In tipping the visitor experiences from intrinsically rewarding to meaningful, relevant and potentially transformative For me, this goes to the heart of museum practice and my work in experience design It's a craft that is very visitor-centered, that requires empathy and creativity Working across departments to ensure everyone is working collaboratively to deliver a seamless and excellent experience for the visitor Whatever that means for the visitors you are designing for So, those are just a few of the models and mindsets I share with museums when I'm resetting the I'm thinking in a different way about visitor experience And this is what I shared with Lander's Museum, Votsenberg and Jan Before then running a visitor experience lab to introduce my processes to the team These processes were developing a visitor experience framework for the museum Creating profiles of their core visitor types often referred to as personas And customer journey mapping, the orientation and refinding experience of the museum This involved the team being split into small groups, each walking the museum in the shoes of one of the perspectives of the persona And the process surfaced visitor pain points and blind spots that hadn't registered As a problem with the team before And because this was all done with the digital agency, with Flock's guide, it directly informed how the multimedia device Could address problems and add value Not just generic value, but value with specific visitor types in mind as part of the holistic visitor experience So Jan, how did you feel about this? You're on mute Jan Thank you. Thank you. It's much better now. Honestly, I was very very skeptical even in the workshop itself I liked and understood the theoretical approach But I think as most of us time is my smallest resource. So a two days workshop About learning how visitors might perceive things was kind of a maximum threat to my feelings Um In anyways, we knew precisely what we wanted. We had a defined concept. We wanted we knew who we wanted to reach so, um What made the difference? What what was changing my mind? um What was changing my mind was that I actually went through the experience of the workshop, which was not only Right, this is how I've found in the end. Thank you for that slide um so it was not Going through these two days changed my perception of the museum And for the first time I walked through the museum that I've been working for almost 15 years and I experienced the museum That my everyday self had forgotten that it exists The museum I experienced wasn't quite as good as my professional self thought it would be I had to admit that I had made up excuses for all the deficits because I knew Why they were there and the way they came into being But that didn't make the deficits any better by the end Simple things occurred in a clearness and urgency of which I knew they were problematic But I had lost the perception of how influential they were to the visitors needs example We have an inner court. It's a beautiful renaissance court of north palace and in there stands a huge horseman statue And I know who he is and I know why he stands there But there's no sign nor explanation or anything it just stands there and anyone entering this courtyard this beautiful renaissance courtyard Has immediately one question Who is the horseman and why is he there? And no one gets an answer and that is very Disappointing so I I was really disappointed that was that was bad So making this experience is more intense Than reading or listening or having a webinar on it. So actually going through the experience itself is absolutely necessary It is feeling the pain and the glory of the experience So how far away are we from our visitors needs? And I knew that it was now necessary to spend more efforts on the experience planning I wanted to present this approach and attitude to our entire team and to adopt the methods for our exhibition planning process What did you do then? Yeah Well, the next thing I did is I talked to my director and told her about the experience. I just went through And she shared Or she accepted that that that that that is a good idea to bring that Knowledge to the entire team. So we were able to to make up a new workshop and we asked Lisa whether she was willing to come to us with our flux guide and She came over with this beautiful KLM airplane, I guess At that time we had a couple of exhibitions in planning They all when we're at a different level of the process but we knew that we had to do something because I think as many museums will want to do something new We wanted that our exhibitions get better more appropriate for today's public and so we presented Lisa's method to the entire team which are about 25 people in in the sciences in the The communication department and my department And then we tried to bring Lisa into the projects at the different states of development The first project we went into Was the fashion exhibition which was due to open in october 2020 and it opened in october 2020 just For being closed a week afterwards, which is really a pity The planning for the design had almost finished at that time And the design was approved So the team had the desire to do something really new because The exhibition is about the fashion between the 1950s and today's you will want it to be really cutting edge modern and Serving the two days public and not being one more cultural historic museum as there are so many And we had the dull feeling that the design in our concept hadn't achieved that so far So the random visitor experience workshop and especially the exhibition architects Well, let's say taken by surprise um about our decision Well, we was to see how far we could go in developing personalized Experiences the visitors to the fashion exhibition in a way that would attract new visitors What's keeping the loyal ones happy by weaving together tailored experiences that delivered on the visitors different needs and motivations And we did it here's how First we assembled the team These are all the teams that i've worked with That to show that all my work involves interdisciplinary collaborative and co-creational practice Working with teams in a way that leverages their combined skills Experiences and qualities Harvesting the different and valuable perspectives of the group That was no exception as at landers museum. I worked with the front of house team volunteers curators Educators and people from the marketing and digital departments And in order to ensure we were truly visitor centered We also invited visitor representatives to take part in the visitor experience lab as well as the exhibition designers When I arrived the exhibition themes and concepts were already very well developed So we use the exhibition model and the displays to brief participants as fully as possible in a curatorial vision The different galleries and themes in the exhibition an early stage exhibition design Then each team took responsibility for one visitor type And immersed themselves in the world of that visitor and their specific relationship to fashion Having real people in the groups helped provide that reality check Which prevented them from relying on their own assumptions about the visitor or simply deferring to themselves and their own preferences Each team created a visitor sketch tailored to inform the process of personalization These were then further developed into more fleshed out profiles called personas This is what one of them looked like On the left you have the pen portrait that distinguishes this persona from different types of visitor On the right you have their motivations and need states in relation to this exhibition And a need state is a critically important concept when it comes to personalization Because context is everything What Nils and Nina wants from a fashion exhibition May be very different to what they want from for example an exhibition by Monet And the sites of relevance will almost certainly be a different also So let's take a quick look at Nils and Nina Their affluence, style conscious professionals and discerning fashion shoppers And I've seen that there's loads of the visitor guy They want an experience that exudes style quality and great design But they can feel affirmed by seeing something of themselves in the exhibition and with opportunities for impressive digital engagement The chances are that Nils and Nina are not the victor museum runners So it's also important to surprise and delight them An anchor of positive memory around their exhibition experience in the hope that they will return And then let's just have a quick peek at the other three personas just in brief There was Walt Roud and Wolfgang, loyal museum visitors Conservative in taste who appreciate the finer things in life and who may want an experience that is gently informative Softly sensual and nostalgic Issa and Ansel are young students Appearance is important and fashion is a means of self-expression Perhaps more street than Nils and Nina They want an experience that is visual, engaging and digitally interesting Perhaps with more links to popular culture and street culture, the kind of culture that they recognize Andreas and Andrea are hardworking, low to middle income people Not into popular culture, the museum visiting What they look for is something that is light, fun, social, highly visual and with minimal reading The characteristics of each persona were then mapped onto a grid to identify points of commonality and points of difference These were then synthesized into a visitor experience blueprint that provided the roadmap for the exhibition design Here we have an at a glance representation of the shared and unique need states of each visitor type And with this we could identify which kinds of experiences would support most of the personas And which were highly discreet and important It was in fact a guide on how to personalize the experience The next change was to visit a journey map of the exhibition from the perspective of the personas using the scale model provided by the designer And this served with some really rich insights There was a classic example of where a curator had supplied a list of requirements for one area in the exhibition And the designer had created a beautiful thing around it, but without really considering the nuances of the visitor experience The idea was to evoke the glamour and buzz of a fashion show And the plan was to build a runway with a video wall of catwalk shows at one end Complete with loud pumping music and on the runway there would be static mannequins wearing fashion garments And at foot level a number of screens playing videos of fashion shows through the ages Our visitor journey mapping exercise demonstrated how this simply would not work For starters it was a very glamorous The noise bleed alone would disrupt the experience for the other visitors Static mannequins on the runway killed any sense of energy and made the runway off limits to the visitors Reducing it to merely a prop Rather than a potential site of engagement There was no way of getting involved or feeling a part of it or being on the runway And with a bank of historic video at foot level there was just too much going on He needed to be rethought and with the help of the visitor experience blueprint The designers managed to turn it around into one of the defining Experiences of the exhibition and a really which I had the soundtrack to go with that goes along with this Cold show time the area is now an invitation into a discreet Inlassive sensory experience with plenty of wow factor and no objects Delirious catwalk creates an infinity effect Delighting a music club like and vividly atmospheric Ahead a video of dancers bogey multiplied by the mirrors At times it booms and talks illiterally and you think it's actually like cameras This is an evocative social playful experience and visitors like Nils and Nina have been seen posing dancing Voting laughing interacting with each other and taking pictures. It's a memorable and shareable moment One that evokes the glamour and appeal of the catwalk in a way that surprises the delight because who would expect this in a museum? And perhaps in taking part some of the visitors may have come to embody their fashion selves or alter egos in a different way And witness the fashion selves of others and may be in a way that affirms their own identities coupled with a sense of fun so back to the workshop And and the visitor journey mapping the next thing we have to do once we've identified all the problems in the blind spots was to do something about it so the team's deep work Around the personas helped them reconceptualize the key elements of the exhibition by repurposing existing design concepts and developing new ones in order to trigger experiences that met the persona needs These concepts were then pitched critiqued and improved as a group before the designers took them to next stage developments At the end we took time to reflect on what had happened and it became clear that the impacts on the team as well as on the ideas were also significant The rate has developed a clearer vision for the exhibition in the form of the visitor experience blueprints This was a whole new way of working for them They appreciated the value of bringing together their curatorial authority with a more highly developed visitor sensibility and came to understand are different people from what different experiences from the same subject matter They identified specific motivational drivers that could inform the design of more relevant meaningful experiences And they discovered the need to find triggers into deeper more rewarding levels of interaction and engagement that could result in turning points They came to understand how a network of tailored top-point interactions Could create a more personalized experience for the visitor And as for the designers their approach shifted significantly from an emphasis on the aesthetics of the exhibition Um to an astute focus on the visitor experience So yeah, how did it go? Well, let me be honest We were having a hard time with the design team um We had a hard time with the entire team because everybody had to rethink about his role and responsibility in the project and the people from the museum Probably took it easier because the um the impulse of change came from the museum But the designers were taken by surprise and we had to talk a lot with them to make To to to explain to them that this is not taking away their responsibility or criticizing their approaches or their way of working By the end we did find together as a team again and I think we delivered a very very good exhibition The result is a surprisingly broad exhibition from the content point of view and a carefully composed mixture of media in the exhibition itself Of which we were afraid honestly until the opening day that it might be too much So we we have put a lot of new things in especially for social media, but also for movies films Um, and we thought it might be an overload We as a museum of cultural history as conservative people as we are wearing strange jackets like this one um The intensity of visual design elements Is extraordinary strong for the habits and the understanding of a museum And certainly for those of our visitors, which are now named waltrud and wolfgang so for our typical um public But it is not for ishi nor for andrius or nina And they're all actually visiting or they were when we were open The amount of visitors not belonging to our core visitor group was overwhelming throughout this week when we had open And was even strange to have These people In our museum, you know um We opened the door and in came people dressed up like coming from um Like coming from the catwalk people who really care about fashion in the lives and They were not people caring about museum in the lives so much um I would like to share two experiences with you Um, recently I was talking to a colleague from the building authority She was visiting with a family two children and the parents and she said, you know None of us has a similar understanding of fashion, but we all went in there and afterwards we met for a cafe and We talked about it And we had completely different experiences. We did See different things than she saw different things than her children or than her husband did but Just because they weren't so important to them But every one of them found something and they as a group enjoyed thereby the visit Another story I really like is at the press conference our curator Mike van Rijn Said that she was feeling to be the advocate of all these persona groups now and that she Wanted to make sure that even waltzrod and waltzgun Find their approaches in the exhibition and that led to the headline in the newspapers Which was waltzrod loves it too. So that is amazing. I think how far the reach of this work can be um During the same time when we did the work for the fashion exhibition We had two other exhibitions on the run at different levels of planning Especially one project was challenging. It is about women at the rock courts And the surprising careers they made The project had begun with very different ideas what it should be about The former director imagined a different focus than the curating team So the concept there the balancing act between something like the royal glamour show And a seminar in gender studies and it didn't go well together So, um, we saw the need for another workshop there We had A team that comprised a few three curators the museum director the new museum director Who has certainly different interests than the former director did We had representatives from marketing events education conservation and digital two interns and Some of those never had taken part in one of the workshops before And then covered happened So the plan was I was going to come over and run physical workshops in house with the team And obviously I couldn't the challenge was how to convert my immersive collaborative experiential learning programs into a virtual format And I came across a mural which was a lifesaver Mural is an online collaboration tool This allows dispersed teams to work together on a virtual whiteboard with virtual moving stickers It's easy to learn and it actually is a facilitator's dream This became the vehicle for the whole program Which was constructed as weekly online modules that took place over a period of two months We haven't got time to go into the program in detail, but I'll just share you some of the highlights So Normally when curators develop an exhibition concept It's very information rich with a focus on knowledge and learning and objects obviously After working my usual reset process on them I thought them through a series of exercises to help them layer up Um the the concept of visitor experience by imagining all the different kinds of experiences and here are some of the mural here are some of the um Mural boards they created by layering up all the different kinds of experiences that might happen In relation to doing thinking feeling what the defining peak experiences might be and what kind of impacts post visit They were hoping for Well, this time We are in the face of the project where we don't haven't yet found a designer. We haven't even looked for one But this time it is the curatorial team who is struggling with their role Being used to develop content content concepts on their own They now were afraid of being restricted by the team But after a while of common need to develop The core or the frame for the exhibition was shared throughout the team and again through the experience of the process itself The curators managed to develop and redefine the role Becoming again the advocates for the interests of our audience groups Another thing we want to do is try and identify points of thematic relevance and resonance Between the lives of historic women in the exhibition and women today Which could be surfaced and woven into the exhibition as part of its experiential melody We then explored the themes through the lens of head and heart So that we could understand the potential of these themes to engage the mind and elicit emotional engagement The next change was to cast our gaze outwards and begin to look at who the potential visitors might be And the key question we asked ourselves was what kinds of people might be drawn to this exhibition We then did this huge brainstorm on a mural canvas, which was eventually refined into these three key groups But very simply The groups were people primarily interested in the history who want deep and detailed knowledge Probably in your historical books dramas and documentaries and perhaps Have a specific interest in the history of southwest germany Then another group we find was those drawn to a more feminist angle Maybe because of their life experiences because they strongly identify as feminists or maybe just because they're parents and girls They would be drawn to the themes and and correspondences between and and now and an opportunity to inform their personal politics Finally, there are those who might be interested in the women's stories And who would be who would visit as part of a social day out with their friends And they might want something light Interesting and relevant Who might be delighted at the end that they had a surprising and emotionally engaging experience and we further developed these Using data and the knowledge of the team Into more defined personas Each giving us an insight into what each part each type might want to visit to this specific exhibition And importantly suggesting how we might exceed their expectations in order to delight them In this way, we're always seeking to push experiential performance at every stage in the process Our challenge was how to apply these personas to the task of an exhibition that didn't exist except in the curator's heads On paper as a rough concept documents and an online store of possible objects My response was to try and visualize the exhibition as much as possible by creating a series of virtual galleries on mural with the curator This virtual representation was structured thematically as in the exhibition concept documents with images of the objects They had in mind in each gallery Together with approximations of what types of activities and multimedia was in each room What you can see here is just one element of the whole thing Then the curators gave the whole team a virtual guide and tour of the exhibition In order to immerse them as fully as possible in their exhibition ideas Our hope was that this would be enough to enable the team to adopt a persona And walk through the exhibition in their shoes and it was To do this, I replicated the virtual exhibition three times on a mural board Each with its own visitors a dirty map and persona They're arranged in such a way that we could compare the experiences across the three personas gallery by gallery The team was divided into three groups each taking one of the personas And they imagined walking in the shoes of their persona through the exhibition Marking the experience on the journey maps Now of course, it's not the same as a real thing. I know that But the real thing didn't exist In fact as an indicator it worked very well What emerged were three very different pictures of the visitor journey from three different perspective Each one conveyed the highs the lows and the everything in between And it was as near as we could get to empathy at this very early stage in exhibition development We learned that whilst it offered a great experience for the history lovers, it didn't work so well for the others There was a lot of work to do in developing a narrative structure and story arc We engaged those visitors who would enjoy a more emotionally engaging narrative experience We needed better ways to surface relevance by building experiential bridges between the lives of women then and now For the exercise actually raised more questions than answers, but they were very good question For example How do you make detailed, complex historical material accessible to different levels of attention and types of interest? How can we weave the different need states of our three core visitors across the entirety of the exhibition experience? And how do we turn up the dial on contemporary relevance and emotional engagement? It was time to work on some of the tough questions I ran two workshops called explorations and in the first we explored concepts and structures around narrative and emotional engagement And then I gave the team a mural which contains all the deconstructed elements of the exhibition as movable elements With this the team could reconfigure remove and add elements Just to see what happened This provided everyone with a safe space and permission to play and experiment with ideas To think differently to explore possibility To try the unimaginable and all in a risk-free environment I think they found the experience quite liberating and the results were impressive eight these alternative exhibition structures, for example um Each one of the ones that they created resulted in a profoundly different visitor experience Through different ways of connecting the themes or telling the story or connecting past and present Or by giving the visitors the option of choosing which themed room to go into based on their own references And interest rather going through a prescribed linear journey So what's all this like to Well, you need to watch this space as the workshops only finished a couple of weeks ago And all this information is hot off the press But I would like to share some of the immediate learning outcomes of the virtual program We learned that the curators didn't find it easy They weren't used to relinquishing their unique status and the way they usually squirrel themselves away to work on an exhibition alone They felt vulnerable about opening themselves up to scrutiny at very early stage development And perhaps a little apprehensive about working in such detail with non-curators All this was new But they did get a lot out of it By directly experiencing the value was working of working as a cross departmental team It came to understand that there is no I in curator And by how pooling their collective skills experiences and perspectives They were able to problem solve Generate ideas and develop emotional literacy together As a team they now have a common understanding of this exhibition Which will support them further down the line when we begin to work on marketing education and programming They have become much more visitor-centred and experientially focused And now appreciates that the key to great exhibition planning is to understand who your potential visitors are And what makes them tick And then build bridges between their interests and needs states and the exhibition in a way that is relevant to them And finally the team directly experienced the power of experimentation and play at early stage development So Let me finish Let me finish my part of this webinar by suggesting That if you're committed to developing a truly great exhibition Traditional curatorial processes alone may no longer be enough And what is required is a clear understanding of what you want from your visitor articulated in a visitor experience blueprint And in ways that engages your empathy and that deepens your visitor sensibility You need to operate from an open and experimental mindset Working creatively and collaboratively to craft experiences that both deliver on your curatorial aspirations whilst also offering tailored experiences for specific visitor types And in a way that delights them and exceeds their expectation This isn't about edutainment It's about boosting your potential to become appealing Relevance emotional engaging impactful and memorable All you need to do is to reset And try out some of the new tools and processes I've shared with you today Yeah well You may have noticed that when when you decide to to take up that kind of work you definitely Take two decisions The one is you strive for quality and that might impact your time schedule I'm responsible in our museum for time schedules. I have to Give the promise that we deliver in time But I do have to give the promise as well to deliver the quality we need it and that's why that's why we are indulging so deeply into this kind of work And you you will have seen with the last example How it changed the understanding of everyone in the team About their role what they're actually doing why they're working here. What is success for them? So what I would like to emphasis is this is the experience planning is not about talking about experiences It is about Experiencing itself And after a while it is taking up an evolved attitude That is more attached to the needs of others than to the proud self understanding of being a successful museum professional That's that was my Point of view when I did the first workshop You know, I knew what I was doing. I still know what I'm doing, but now I know I do it much better because I do reach the things For which I do work for Our museum will apply this methodology In the coming exhibition projects and we have adjusted our budgets To do this and we will have to adjust our time schedules to work this way It takes time it changes the team people have to think and reconsider and have to adopt these values At the same time we are aiming to learn these techniques and become independent This is probably a hard information for Lisa, but we're enjoying working together But we don't want to spend the rest of our lives together. So at a certain point Well, I know we would but But um You know at a certain point that house has the museum has to learn to work that way This is level one learn it doing it yourself furthermore We are planning to introduce this methodology not only to exhibition design, but to all the fields in contact with the public Which are especially the communication field the education and the digital department And as a third step what we want to do to change our house to get relevant today Is to train in a biannual workshop our volunteers Each second year in november we get new volunteers to our house And one of the first things they will have to do is to go through one of those workshops to get the values to get the attitude to get the techniques to work in that way because With with the fashion exhibition and with the changes which we were achieving on the baroque women exhibition um We as a museum see that we actually Managed now to do what we wanted to do. We wanted to become more relevant for the public and now we have the the means to do it Well Next slide, please um The experience design is an experience that people have to go through that is what I mentioned already And it will open the eyes and allow you to slip into the needs of other people And that is probably the most important thing to accept that you will have to Have elements in your exhibitions in in all your programs that you personally even as professional would probably Not think they are necessary or even good, but they are good for your visitors when you have found them in a right way The process to adapt that methodology to museum needs to be moderated by an experienced person And I'm really thankful to Lisa that she That she was taking the hard time to work with me all that time even preparing that workshop wasn't all fun for her um Then next thing you have to do is to bring the skills and mindsets Into your organization that takes time We are now working with this methodology for about Almost two years and we will go on and I personally think that with within two or three years time But we'll have become something self understanding. No one will ask it. Everyone will just do it. It's it just came down to our consciousness Um, we have to bring it to all the departments. It's necessary. It's not useful if only If only the exhibition works that way, but especially the communication the digital outreach Do have to do the same things um one Consequence that this way of working brings with it is that you pull down fences between the departments in the house It was so hard for all of us in the workshops to accept that none of the roles is Secured is is protected The the the opinion of everybody is relevant to come to a good solution um, we bring in our interns to these projects and um I have to say that oftenly these young people do have amazingly good ideas so We we just take that um so And what probably one last thing to say if you come to an exhibition that has been developed Following these methods. It will not necessarily look different from any other exhibition that you've been to Um, but in the person in in responsibility, you will get the feedback That nearly all people who were attracted to the theme Will appreciate the exhibition the reactions we had on the fashion during the first week Be it in the press or be it by the public visitors Were astoundingly well and those were not the people who come here usually so and that is success and and being relevant for audiences Thank you very much Thank you both so much. Um for your wonderful presentation. I'll start by giving you my little digital round um, but Yes, yon, I would like to first say that I really think it's such an added value to have someone who's experienced You know, uh, Lisa's methodology rather than only having The creator walk us through the methodology. I think that really you know aids us in the museum experience of implementing this and Lisa also early on I think it was so key that you also brought in the sensory and emotional aspect of the experience And that it really is an end to end When you're talking about the museum visits and I also, you know, I I really love this quote from you that Satisfaction is what makes you forgettable. It's really challenging all of us to level up what we are offering So that's wonderful. Um I would like to invite we already have quite some questions in the chat Um, but if there are more questions, uh, please feel free to continue submitting them And if we don't get to all of them, then of course, I'm sure our speakers will be happy to address you afterwards so, um I would like to start with uh You feel that uh art museums are less compatible with this sensory model as they can Detract from an already existing highly aesthetic visual experience And possibly over uh stimulate the visitors interactions with the objects Can I answer you? Go ahead So so if I was right away, I've run this workshop in my head for years Is um, what if we broke all the rules? Because there is a standardized way of experiencing art, which is very minimalistic and yes very aesthetic But there can be alternatives and you can have both So what about if there were spaces in an exhibition where you had the painting of the week? Where you were able to go in and re-experiencing in a different way So the what you're doing is you're not changing how museums function You're just giving visitors the choice of being able to experience A work of art based on their own experiential preferences rather than those of the artillery I hope that answers your question I would like to add something um Personally, I think um You know the the line drawn between art museums and other museums is an artificial and constructed line It does not exist into into the heads of the majority of the public They they go there because they have a certain interest and the needs With which they come to an art museum Are not very much different from the needs they have visiting any other um similar institution be it a museum for natural history or for cultural history or for whatever schnapps glasses We have a schnapps glass museum here around the corner So um people come there with their needs and that is the point if I think about the the best um art exhibitions I've seen um It were those who communicated a lot It were those who explained to me who gave me a chance to Get a new view onto what I was seeing beyond the only aesthetic approach And then I say uh the methodology that Lisa's proposing is absolutely valuable for them Yeah, so I I definitely hear that it's of course coming back to visitor choice There's always going to be choice before you enter and then if we can you know only build on that inside the museum that Only only getting better So for the next question here We're we're wondering How could we convince um a very large organization that doesn't do so much to engage the public? And create a network within the city. How can we encourage them to start this process? Did it work with us? Yeah, how did I encourage you to? um Well, the the first thing is you you have to get a leap into the organization At a level that can influence decisions in our case. That was me Um ahead of department. I report to the director and I if I say to the director, this is valuable um The chances are good that the director will react So I think having an allied agent in the in the museum itself who is close to decision taking that is that is The the the reason for these are being successful with us I had to remember everybody that yann was really quite grumpy with me when I first arrived and asking me really difficult questions Like what am I getting one of the tangibles one of the outcomes and I had to say trust me Place your faith in the process and he did so thank you for that yann otherwise none of this would have happened I've I believe you Now I I believe you of course, but I I do have to say it is uh It is a leap of faith because you do uh the both of you make such a great team here So I'm I'm glad that that transition happened And the other thing also is to start with a small project We just started with the multi major guide. You need proof of concepts, especially when it's new processes So don't I mean it's taken us two years to a point where we're going to be working together strategically on the whole music the holistic museum experience But just start with one thing Yeah, one thing prove it and then scale up That's probably the best way to start Excellent. So starting small scaling up and keeping the holistic methodology in mind It's wonderful. Um, so we have a question for you both here What do you think about virtual online tours as a way to develop your audience? And I would add to that. Do you think this uh Like to which extent can you include the the experience design in the online realm? Oh completely I mean, I've done it in the past. It's exactly the same principle just a different medium um in terms of trying to get people to come Do a museum? Um, I would say don't pull your punctures So if you're going to do a virtual um exhibition Use it as an opportunity to show your personality Not just what you've got and try and create at first point an emotional bond Whether it's through humor or a satisfied entity in place or whatever it is So the people are drawn to you And then they want to experience how you do what you do not just what you have in your galleries Yeah, um The question is can you adapt it to the digital realm the answers? Yes, you can The the the thing is that the digital experience is different from the real experience But that everybody knows We started the process with the digital project and we learned so much through that way About what we have to do because the digital is just bridging your way into the museum You know, it's just it's just the the long call into the wild um Getting people inside so you start to make a promise there and if you do it in the digital you you do a good job If you do not stop in the digital Great. Um, so I mean we have a lot of questions here, but um, I think I'm going to choose this one as a wrap up And that is what are uh, it's specifically for lisa, but yon, of course, you're welcome. Um, it's uh, What are some of the main challenges that you're seeing from museums? In order to in order to manage or embrace this kind of thinking like are there some Challenges that you're seeing repeated over and over again. Yeah Um, and this is quite a personal one. Sorry everybody, but I'm not a museologist I don't have a degree in music studies and it's really interesting. I'm a specialist in experience and experience design Um, and I find trying to get a foot in the door is actually very hard to speak to Um, uh, and so on the bell curve of innovation I spent my time looking for the innovators and earlier doctors the people who are ready to try something new Um, and if they don't have that mindset in the first instance It's going to be very hard to get a foot in the door So it's always about trying to find those people want to try something new It's also quite a difficult thing to explain as yon said it's when you experience it All my programs are designed to elicit moments of insight. It's all about experiential change Experiential learning culture change comes from within So even though this is all about the visitor The soft outcome is that I'm working on the team so that they get it Because if they don't edit it's just another shiny new tool rather than something that they actually believe in Yeah, so in order to as as you said earlier implement holistically It's really that first, uh, you know, dipping your toe in that willing to willingness to be vulnerable and try something new Which of course Can be difficult, but uh, certainly rewarding if we're brave enough Absolutely Well, um With that, um, I will thank you both. Uh once again, thank you so much for joining us today was Really a wonderful webinar very insightful. Um fall learned quite a bit. Um, and yes, I Ending here and Welcoming everyone of course to tomorrow's session Our our next session, which you'll find here You can join us. We will be starting as usual on time at 10 a.m Central european time We always recommend you come in a little bit early And our session that we will be getting with is how to create a new type of museum So, uh, just as we are finishing up here, we're going to continue with some more great discussions tomorrow We're looking forward to your participation And following that, uh, we will have a bit of a wrap up, uh with, uh, david from nemo And uh from there, we're just going to discuss a bit of what we've learned in the past three sessions And where we go from here and lastly, of course, uh, we do have another special treat of an online museum tour in reyeka Where of course naturally we all wish we could be but we're all very happy to be here online together So if you have not, uh, registered for these events tomorrow, you will find the registration or link in the chat And yeah, feel free to join us. We look forward to seeing you then I know